Handle With Care
by HamsterMasterSamster
Summary: Turns out adopting a clandestine family of mutant ninja turtles with a truckload of enemies makes life in New York just that little bit more dangerous. Accepting the risks in theory? Easy. Facing them in reality? Well, that's a little more complicated. And terrifying. But O'Neils were never known for backing down from a challenge. TMNT 2k3 found family adventure times.
1. Some Normal Office Building

There was a secret art to breathing.

There was, apparently, a secret art to a _lot _of things that April had once never given a second thought. Walking, for example, without letting your footfalls make a sound. Standing still in one place, to the point of becoming hidden in plain sight. Looking and hearing and observing the world around you, but really _seeing_ and _listening_ and _sensing_ the tiny details that connected you to it.

In the moment, crouched in the shadows cast by a large potted plant in the intimidating beige office hallway, she would have given a lot just to nail the breathing. Like all those ninjutsu-enhanced arts, it was really about control - body and mind and spirit honed as one. Core centred. Nerves steel. Air flowing slow, steady and soundless. As invisible to the ears of your enemy as you must be to their eyes.

Of course, Master Splinter could make anything sound like a matter of mere willpower. April liked to think she had an overabundance of that, but nothing could really account for her lack of experience. The last security camera in her path, blinking a demonic red light in the corner, was the trickiest of all with a razor-thin blindspot; it made a droning noise on its back-and-forth arc that she could barely hear above the thumping of her pulse in her ears. Her palms itched within the confines of her gloves. She had stuffed her conspicuously-magenta hair beneath a charcoal beanie, and now her scalp was growing damp with sweat.

"_Hey. Are you okay?"_

Don's voice filtered softly through her earpiece. Reassurance that, for all she was alone in the hallway, she was not, actually, _alone_.

Warmth bloomed deep in her chest. She briefly gave up on any pretence of ninja breathing to take a nice deep lungful of air, and blew it out in a determined puff. Her nerves jangled like electric wires, but beneath it all was an undercurrent of adrenaline that was as familiar to her as family. True, she hadn't _always_ been breaking into places she wasn't meant to be, but long before she'd ever met a teenage mutant ninja turtle, she had grown to love the way her blood quickened when faced with a challenge.

"I'm good," she whispered, firm enough to mean it.

"_You've _got _this, April."_ And she could so clearly picture the beaming smile on his gentle face that she felt herself mirror it in miniature.

"_Yeah, you got this,"_ a gruffer voice grated across the line. Her smile broadened . . . "_So _get _it, already!" _ . . . and immediately flatlined. "_Watchin' Chief of Security here do his 'rounds' between the front desk and the doughnut box in the staff breakroom ain't exactly turnin' out to be the most thrillin' night of my life."_

"_C'mon, Raphie. If I can entertain myself in this place, so can you!"_

" _. . . How exactly are you entertaining yourself, Mikey?"_ Leonardo's voice, clear and precise, was fraught with justifiable concern.

"_Seein' how many doughnuts I can swipe from under the security dude's nose before he notices they're going missing. Wanna plaf betf?"_ That last phrase was so muffled by confectionary that April wedged a finger underneath the earpiece to check for resultant spit.

Donnie's long-suffering groan was unmistakable. "_Can you guys at least _pretend _to be professional ninja for two minutes?"_

"And remember - I'm _not_ one, so cut me a little slack here? I'm going!" April muttered, to grumbling assent from her naysayer. It was followed by a courteous silence, and she used it to centre herself before taking off down the hall.

Dowdy, low budget office carpeting soaked up the sound of her sneakers, but it wasn't the camera's ears she needed to fool. Nothing to do but rely on her judgement; April waited until just before its lens was at its furthest point away from her and slipped in underneath it, startling herself with the slight bump of her hip pack against the wall. She pinned herself there, as still as she could make herself, sucking in every possible bulge of fat in her body.

A second later and she'd chosen her exit route, sprinting her way out of the camera's field of vision before the Eye of Sauron Security could frame her. At least, she hoped so. An undercurrent of nerves told her she'd misjudged that for sure . . .

"_Perfect,"_ Donnie confirmed with a gleeful whisper. "_No sign of you on the feed."_

Would he even tell her if there was? More likely to just casually overwrite the footage for her while lying through his teeth, she thought fondly. But on the off-chance he was right, April allowed herself a tiny flicker of pride.

"How do you even know I've moved yet?" she whispered.

"_Educated guess. Time elapsed, mostly. Also the sound of your breathing."_

"Coming from anyone else, that would be _creepy_."

The door she needed was on the right, barred by one tiny keypad that fell swiftly beneath savage button presses of the code that Donnie had fished out of some unencrypted communication logs.

"_No engineers in here, April,"_ he reassured as she slipped inside. Tall, intimidating banks of blinking machines obscured her view of the windowless room, but the way they ran off in rows suggested it was pretty big. Environmental controls thinned the air and gave it a chill that froze the sweat dampening her clothes. "_There are only a couple guys in the building and I spoofed some screwy diagnostic reports to their email, so they'll be digging around in a server room on the second floor for a while."_

"Gotta admit, it's a little weird being on this end of the conversation," she said, wearing a nervous grin. At least there were no advanced unearthly holographic interfaces to deal with, or aliens hiding inside creepy human being-suits, or Casey driving her around on futuristic hover-pallets while they were fired at by lasers - just good old familiar, reliably unreliable human tech. She reached the nearest humming server rack and checked it for labelling, though it was hard to find anything amidst the frightening spaghetti insanity of slipshod network engineers.

"Oh geez, guys," she murmured to herself, running her gloved fingers across the tangled wires. "Didn't your mother ever teach you to use cable ties?"

A theatrical gasp shook the line. "_I bet they're not even _colour_-coded."_

"Afraid not. It's a total free-for all in here. Ah, rack number's right here . . ."

"_Did you see how inconsistent their server names were?"_

"Right? Underscores and hyphens at random, ugh. If you're a professional hosting service, the least you can do is agree a standard naming convention." April followed the racks around, nose brushing the swell of wires and fingertip tracing the labels in the hunt for the one she needed. "And a _theme_."

"_My god, _yes_. The theme is _so _important."_

"You only ever use one!"

"_Well, duh. It's the best one."_

She stifled a soft laugh. "Some day you're gonna run out of material."

"_Puh-lease. With around 300 extant species of turtle, their binomial names alone are an absolute goldmine."_

"One time, me and my college buds set up a multi-machine neural network and we used the periodic table of the elements."

"_Ohhh. Classy, I admit. How did you group th-"_

"_Hey! Pagin' the nerd squad! You wanna get on with this? While we're young?"_

April smirked. Her fingers were resting on one particular peeling rack label.

"BRK021 on TS19, right? I'm going in."

She fished a turtle-customised pda from her hip pack and set to work.

* * *

There were no cameras in the server room. Donatello's laptop screen cycled through an array of intercepted security feeds, washing him with shades of grey in the darkness of the little storage closet, but April continued to elude them all. A shame he couldn't watch her work, but he had seen April settle down to accomplish some hacking more than enough times by now to picture her sitting cross-legged at the base of the server rack, the PDA hooked up by cables and resting in her lap, her fingers dancing across the keypad. Maybe she'd be wearing that little frown she always adopted when she was concentrating particularly hard, the one that made her forehead crinkle . . .

"_Now what?"_

Donatello made a token effort not to sigh too loudly. He leaned back as best he could in the cramped space and folded his hands behind his head.

"_Now_, Raphael, we wait for April to work her magic and tap into that sweet, sweet motherlode of Purple Dragon data."

There was a gravelly groan. "_How long's it gonna take?"_

"I seem to recall you complaining that it was too _dangerous_ to bring April along," he said sweetly. "You don't also get to complain that you're _bored_."

"_Oh, yeah? Well, for the record, I still think this is a bad idea,"_ Raph groused.

"_Master Splinter was all for this."_ The distant sound of a passing vehicle cast a brief shadow across Leo's carefully measured whisper. "_He said it might help us learn how to complete a mission like real ninja."_

Raph made a rude noise. "_What the shell does _that _mean?"_

"_Uh . . . that it ends without all the alarms going off, fighting their entire security force, and half the building being blown up, probably." _Their leader couldn't quite keep the sheepishness from his words.

"_Man."_ Michelangelo made a wet sound that was half-emotion, and half-doughnut. "_Splinter's faith in us really chokes me up."_

Donatello found himself grinning. All those Dragon warehouses and hideouts, everything they'd done at the Foot Clan HQ, and of course, the TCRI building. Technically, Master Splinter had been right there with them on some of their more explosive successes, but he wasn't sure he'd ever have the guts to point that out to their sensei. "In all honesty, our track record for decimating enemy strongholds probably has something to do with the Dragons' sudden interest in DR in the first place."

A moment of hesitant silence on the line told him how much attention his brothers had paid to the technical details of his pre-mission briefing.

"Disaster recovery," he clarified, world-weary.

"_Heh. Sounds like somethin' Mikey could use."_

"_Hey!"_

"It's simple, really," Donnie said, in that voice that his brothers knew meant _they_ were simple, actually, and because of sufficient levels of pity he was ever-so-briefly dropping to their level. "Responsible tech firms will back up or replicate data across to one or more remote sites, so that if their main site is ever compromised, they can switch immediately to the backup host without loss of data or service. It's called a 'Disaster Recovery' plan. But the Dragons have outsourced to this standard, run-of-the-mill data centre for it, probably to keep a low profile. Not that it was low enough . . ." Pride suffused his voice, glowing over the comms channel. "April was fishing through some of their financial account trails and figured out the link."

"_So this really is just some . . . normal office building?"_ Raphael made no effort to disguise his scepticism. "_No aliens, no enemy ninja, no gangster thugs needin' a beatdown?"_

"Nope. Completely and utterly normal. That's why April and I knew it would be safe for practice! DigiVault are just a regular, innocent data centre and hosting business and we -"

"_Yeaaaah. Um. About that."_

* * *

April's findings had slowly eroded the ambient smile formed by the turtles' background banter. She waited for her soft interjection to have the desired effect.

"_Great. What went wrong?"_ Leo ventured.

"Oh, the data's downloading fine," she said, one eye on the progress bar. "Their firewalls would have taken a while to crack remotely, but getting physical access to the server did the job, just like I said. But I'm fishing through some server maintenance logs while I wait and there are some . . . weird notes. Don, are you still in their comms server?"

"_Of course."_

"Can you dig up the emails of a 'Dean Parker' for me? Dates between . . . May third and sixth. Tell me what you see."

"_On it."_

April left him to the task and scrolled through the timestamps and comments with the keypad, tugging at her bottom lip with her teeth and trying to figure out what else the overzealous maintenance, occasional smug entry note and unusual contributions from one recurring security analyst might mean. She didn't have to wait long for Donnie's nasal outbreath to tell her everything she needed to know.

"_You think they've figured out who their client is?"_

"Yeah."

"_Well, you're right. Obviously. A handful of engineers and specialists seem to be in on it."_

"And they've reported them to the authorities, like good New York citizens?"

She could almost hear the despairing shake of his head. "_Not . . . exactly. Oh boy. These idiots have _no _idea what they've gotten themselves into."_

* * *

The DigiVault office was modest by corporate New York building standards, with only four floors to its name. It rose from the corner of a street that had, so far, proven particularly quiet; Leonardo had been settled in shadow at the lip of the roof since the team had first arrived at 3am, and had barely had to lift his head to scrutinise a passing car.

He wasn't entirely sure what April and Don's revelations meant for the mission - once the two ran off on a train of thought sometimes there was nothing to do but wait patiently for it to rejoin the main tracks. But in truth, he had only half an ear on the conversation.

The other one-and-a-half had fixated on the aggressive revs of an approaching engine.

It came hurtling from a four-way junction at the far end of the street - a nondescript, heavy-duty truck a little larger than the Battle Shell. Windows blacked out, licence plate missing, it fishtailed onto the road and squealed against two parked cars as it rounded the corner. An unfortunate wing mirror pinged off into urban oblivion.

Leonardo's jaw clenched. A single sentence from the comms chatter jumped out at him.

"_Oh, wow. They're trying to extort the Dragons?"_

Let it just be some crazy early morning driver with complete disregard for the rules of the road. Let it just mind its own business and go right on past the DigiVault building . . .

He pressed his will to the mantras. Pressed it harder. Then he took a breath, and pressed the earpiece mic closer to his mouth instead.

"Guys, we got trouble up front. A shady-looking truck just pulled up across the street. Do you have eyes on it from the lobby?"

"_Just the headlights - gonna try and get a closer look,"_ Raph confirmed, a coarse counterpart to Mike's miserable: "_Aww, I didn't finish the doughnuts yet . . ."_

The sliding side door of the vehicle wrenched open and a silhouette unfolded from it, growing broad and square as it straightened up - and growing, and broadening, and _growing_.

"You've gotta be kidding me," he groaned. "Wait, what's he got in his - _Raphgetbackfromthe-_!"


	2. Turtle Luck

The explosion rattled April's bones even from the fourth floor. All around her the dark towers of server units trembled in their racks, their masses of cables bristling like something angry and alive. She almost sprang up, but remembered just in time that she was still gripping the connected PDA with knuckles that must be white beneath her gloves. A warning light had switched on in the room somewhere; the ambience had turned bloody and a high-pitched alarm began to wail nearby, stabbing her ears in two-second intervals.

The power held, though. The download was still going. April glared down at the progress bar on the PDA's screen. She couldn't speak through the lump of fear in her throat - not fear of danger, but the consequences of the blast. Her ears were still ringing from the screech it had ripped across the comm line.

"_Raph?! Mike?!"_ Leo was calling. "_Respond!"_

In the ensuing silence, April held her breath.

She, Don and Leo released in an audible gust when Raphael's rusty voice finally graced the line.

* * *

"Y'know . . ." Raphael paused to spit blood and dusty grit out of his mouth. "For a pair of brainiacs, you two forgot something _real_ important when you worked out your little plan and told us how _easy_ and _safe_ this was gonna be."

"_What?!"_ came the panicked chorus from his headset, barely audible over the blaring alarm that polluted the line from someone's end.

He dragged himself up, glass and brick debris clattering down off his shell in noisy rivulets. Michelangelo was groaning beside him and he offered an arm up as he surveyed the damage.

The missile launcher had punched a jagged gulf out of DigiVault's front entrance, exposing what was left of the front counter and mediocre lobby to the street. A heavy film of swirling dust hung in the air, but it dispersed in streams around the mammoth figure that pressed his way inside, the dark cylinder of the missile launcher still cradled arrogantly in the crook of one tree trunk arm. Hun's smirk was distinctly unpleasant, and he was flanked by a swaggering, jeering mob of Dragons.

"Just a little variable _I_ like to call 'Turtle Luck'," Raphael finished grimly.

Too bad they didn't have the security guard's fortune; the slacker had been on yet another lengthy trip to the breakroom when the door had exploded, and now, drawn back by the noise, he stood by a row of dust-laden potted plants, staring in horror at the newly-imposed devastation. Half a sugar-dusted ring still dangled from his limp grasp.

"Put us through to customer service," Hun sneered in the guard's direction. "The Purple Dragons are here to make a _complaint_."

He hefted the launcher with his usual arrogant menace. Whether he planned to ruin the man's face or just the upholstery around him, Raphael had no intention of finding out - his fingers let fly, and one sai clattered against the barrel of the heavy weapon, jarring it off to one side despite Hun's pressing grip.

"I'd tell ya to pick on someone your own size," Raphael growled, inching out of the rubble, "but we all know how hard that'd be to organise and I ain't no miracle worker."

"You?!" Hun was apoplectic, eyes bulging like they might pop out of his skull. "Here?!"

The guard he'd saved took only a few seconds to weigh the value of his job against the value of his life and sanity, and decided to bolt off at surprising speed back into the breakroom. Hopefully Mikey had left him enough doughnuts to see him safely through this time of crisis.

They, however, were on their own. With forests of grinning gangsters fanning out either side of him, Hun loomed like an angry mountain amidst the settling miasma of dust.

A mountain armed with a missile launcher.

The turtles skittered out of the debris, weapons flourished, and darted forward before Hun could take aim - soaking up the distance between them made the use of heavy artillery an unwise move. Being all up in Hun's personal space wasn't exactly Raphael's idea of fun, but if it kept a rocket off his shell, he'd do it all day.

"What are you _freaks_ even doing here?" The Shredder's right-hand mobster was as pleased to see them as always, but genuine perplexion had his eyebrowless slab of a forehead creased like weathered stone. Honestly, Raphael hadn't followed much of April and Don's excitable conspiracy theories before the rocket launcher had nearly blown out his eardrums, so the feeling was mutual.

"Hey, we got just as much right to be here as you losers." Michelangelo's nunchaku were whirling but he still had enough time and energy for a good old-fashioned heckle. "If you're here for the doughnuts, bad news - box is almost empty. Only the nasty flavours are left, buuuut if you leave now, maybe I'll let you have the coffee cream one! It only has one bite out of it."

"What are you _talking about_?!" Hun waved his small unruly army forward. "Tear this place apart!"

When they separated from the solid mass of their boss, Raphael counted the goons and knew there were too many. Oh, they could fight them all one-by-one, and even dodge here and there as Hun waded into the fray to swing the missile launcher around like a huge iron bat.

What they couldn't do was stop them. Raucously howling hooligans slipped past Raphael on all sides, some pausing to try and get a fun jab at him - but most weren't aiming for him or Mikey at all. They were heading for the stairs, toting their assorted melee weapons while cackling at the prospect of wanton destruction.

"Was their truck a clown car or something?" Mikey complained amidst the cloud of fists and baseball bats and crowbars.

"Got Dragons swarming down here!" Raphael warned over the comms. "A whole lotta Dragons!"

* * *

"_Raph, Mike, keep Hun occupied and try and keep his gang from getting too far in! Don -"_

"I'm heading up for April!"

Duffel bag loaded with laptop and tools, Donatello burst out of his hiding place with little concern for stealth and pounded up the deserted corridor toward the stairs heading up. He could already hear the fighting furore from two floors up, and if he waited too long those thugs could get between him and their plucky ninja-hacker-in-training.

"_That's exactly what I was gonna say,"_ Leonardo said, and Donatello could _hear_ his brother's offended frown.

"_I'm okay, guys. Almost finished the download."_ April's voice was level, if strung with obvious tension. "_Just be careful down there, please!"_

"_If it's not finished when Donnie gets there, we'll take what we've got - we're getting out of here. This has nothing to do with us. I'm gonna take the fire escape and bring the Battle Shell around -"_

"_Leo, there's too many of 'em!"_ His breathing was laboured, but Raphael sounded more frustrated than worried. "_They're gettin' past us! And Hun's still got his - Mikey, head down!"_

There was another muffled explosion from downstairs. Donatello slowed his run, feeling the floor tremble beneath his toes. In his fit of vengeful chaos, would the Dragon leader really be dumb enough to bring the whole building down?

Welp. The PD weren't known for their smarts.

Donatello gritted his teeth. He wanted nothing more than to get April out of the fire he'd accidentally thrown her into, and based on its behaviour, DigiVault had it coming. But not everyone had been involved . . . and behind him, in the direction of the stairs to the floor below, he heard the tinkle of glass, the roar of flames and a low-pitched, malevolent hoot of laughter.

"There are still three people in this building," he said as he hit the stairwell, and began to vault several steps at time towards the next floor. "The guard on the front desk, and the two engineers in a server room on the second floor."

"_The guard already booked it - saw him head out the back door when I was on the roof_," Leo said, "_but we'd better make sure the others make it out okay. Mikey, break off and see if you can find 'em - I got eyes on the fire escape for now if they manage to make it out on their own. Raph, can you handle Hun alone for a while, keep him busy?"_

"_Is this a question you're seriously askin' me, bro? Later, remind me to bap ya."_

The fourth-floor server room corridor loomed ahead. There were no blinking cameras this time, the small dark sentries drooping against their wall brackets - it was unlikely there'd be any time for subtlety now, so he'd disabled the whole camera system before switching off his computer. That hadn't been the plan before; he'd scoped out the threats in advance, figured out which ones would be a suitable test for April, and left them there, because this was meant to be _practice_. Raph wasn't one to drop regular pearls of wisdom, but his 'turtle luck' theory rang annoyingly true. Why should tonight have been any different?

He reached the server room at a run, and didn't need to hammer the keypad this time - the emergency state of the infrastructure had already disabled the lock for him.

"April!" Donatello called out over the alarms, instinctively slipping his bo free from its strap. But almost immediately, he saw an arm waving from behind one of the immense server racks.

She was settled in a crouch, hovering by the server with her eyes glued to the PDA. Sweat shone against her brow, but her body was poised and alert, her eyes were bright, and not only was she doing the crinkly-forehead frown but the tip of her tongue was pressing against her top lip. _Double-whammy focused April_. Truly, a gift.

"April, I don't wanna scare you but there's a horde of Dragons of the human variety setting the building on fire underneath us, so we should probably get moving."

"I'm almost done," she promised. "Twenty second ETA."

It was, exactly. Then April was ripping off the cables, shoving the PDA in her hip-pack and springing easily to her feet. She fell comfortably in step behind him as he made for the server room exit.

"Got April," Donatello said, one finger to his earpiece. "We're heading for the fire escape now."

He muted his line, April doing the same beside him to reduce the noise on the shared channel. She beamed at him as they ran.

"Thanks, Don. It was getting kinda lonely up here! Not that I was _scared_, but . . ."

"You could handle yourself," he grinned back. "Maybe I'm the one who feels safer!"

He felt her boisterous shove against his shell, an affectionate gesture that sent internal warmth out through him like ripples from a thrown stone. "_Hey_, don't make fun!"

"As if I would!"

The stink of smoke stung his nostrils as their path through the winding office hallways drew them closer to their destination. Donatello's smile faded a little and he slowed, waving a hand back to shepherd April behind him. The twists and turns to the corridor obscured their line of sight to the stairwell - and, more importantly, the fire escape door that waited in its vicinity. He brandished his bo staff and proceeded cautiously, every step silent and precise. April did her best to follow suit at his rear.

A bad feeling had begun to burn caustically away in the pit of his belly. Donatello never had much truck with those as reliable data, but this one was hard to ignore. He waited for a moment at the end of the corridor just before the turnoff to the stairs. There was nobody here yet, though he could hear the distant dull crackle of an uncontrolled blaze battling against the sharper hiss of the sprinkler system on the floor below. Grey haze was beginning to drift up to this level, too; a soaking on this floor was probably imminent.

The fire escape door stood just past the stairwell. Donatello gave a nod towards it, and moved out of cover.

He'd taken two steps forward when a clatter from the stairwell sounded, followed by a dripping, irritated Dragon thug staggering out onto the landing. She took one look at Donatello and recoiled.

"There's more o' them freaks up here!" she screamed. Before Donatello could even bring his bo staff to bear, the woman had backpedalled inelegantly the way she had come, disappearing behind the wall closing off the stairwell.

"I could have taken her," April whispered glibly in his ear.

"Clearly even the sight of you terrified her," he nodded, grinning.

Something small, dark and beeping leapt from the stairs.

It skittered around the corner, careened off the wall and spun to a halt against the carpet just a few feet away from his toes.

Don registered that it was a grenade at the same time as he heard April's terrible intake of breath.

Not a single calculation or strategy passed through his head; there was no time. Pure gut instinct carried his arms to thrust the bo staff at the device like a pool cue, smashing it away from them. The same instinct spun him around to cover April, who was turning to run but seemed caught in the unearthly field of slow-motion that had swallowed them both up.

It ended when the grenade went off.

A host of sensations was compressed into that single explosive moment . . . but, later, he would only clearly remember one.

Not the powerful punch of the pressure wave from behind him.

Not the scattershot sting and _kth-thu-thunk_ of shrapnel laying into his shell and the backs of his exposed limbs.

Not the white-hot, ear-rattling roar of the blast.

No. Just the heavy, sickening _crunch_ against his plastron as April met the resistance of a surface that was too damn close - and he slammed right into her with every extra pound his shell contributed to his disproportionate weight.


	3. Car Crash

It had started to rain; a fine spray that seemed insubstantial enough, but was like walking through soft sheets of water that stuck to your skin. As Leonardo hopped inside the Battle Shell he had to wipe the unexpected excess from his eyes, and he left a trail of drips all the way to the driver's seat.

He wasted no time getting the engine running. Wiper blades on - but headlights firmly off - he pulled out of the broad alley they'd hidden their vehicle in.

"Okay, guys - status update. Raph?"

"_Still entertainin' my dancing partner."_ Raph's reply was immediate and sardonic. "_Just got that damn missile launcher off him."_

"Mikey?"

"_You guys have no idea how many Dragons I've had to deal with to clear a path for these dumb engineers,"_ Michelangelo sounded worldweary. "_And when I got to 'em, they screamed at _me _and ran! _Rude_."_

"Are they clear?"

"_Yeah, they're out, but this is one big pain in the shell, Leo. Where are you? I wanna leeaaaave."_

"I'm en route now, about five minutes away."

"_Aww, but I haven't even laid a proper smackdown on Hun yet! I thought this mission was gonna be boring but it turned out okay! Can't ya let a turtle have his f-"_

"_We're leaving _right now_, Raph!"_ Donatello's hoarse voice scythed through the banter. "_April is _hurt_."_

Leonardo's knuckles became rivets welding his hands to the wheel. A hoarfrost of stunned silence swept across the comm line.

"How bad?" he broke it first, his voice steady only in that forced way that a tightrope walker grimly keeps his balance.

* * *

No, no _no_.

Donatello choked on hot, smoky air even as he drowned in a thick, drenching cascade from above. Leo's question rang as shrilly as every other sound in his shot hearing, but it was the one that hurt the most. The arms propping him up felt like a scientifically improbable mix of lead and jelly, and what lay beneath him had already driven the breath from his lungs in one horrified burst.

Somehow she didn't look like anything like April. The April he knew was vibrant with life, an ever-animated spirit. He had a photograph of the two of them working on a project together on his desk, and whenever he glanced at it he always felt there was something important missing from her image. Capturing a single frame of April was never sufficient. She wasn't a person; she was a kinetic force of nature. A still image could never capture the passion in her green eyes, or the fun in her smile, or the warmth in her expressive hands, or the earnest kindness, patience and intelligence in every word that flowed from her mouth.

But even the photograph was better than this. Now she lay crumpled in his shadow, arms limply curled up against her stomach, and utterly still but for the subtle flutter of her chest (lucky, at least, that it fluttered at all). His urgent calls of her name earned no response. The side of her face that was exposed to him looked reddened about the eye socket, but was otherwise lifeless and pale, eyes shuttered and jaw slack. Even the curl of dyed hair that had escaped her dark beanie had been desaturated by the sprinkler torrent to a dull red.

A shaky finger to her throat confirmed the pulse, and it was firm, if a little fast. He couldn't see any visible injuries beside the obvious blow to the head . . . though that didn't mean there weren't any.

"Bad enough," he whispered into his mic.

He shouldn't move her.

He had to. This place wasn't safe, and even if it was, leaving her to the emergency services would open her up to some serious police action. She wasn't meant to be here - she was only really here for them.

_Damn it._

Donatello gathered her worryingly yielding weight up in his arms, trying to keep her head supported carefully against his shoulder as he eased by inches to his feet. She wasn't heavy enough to bother him, but she _was_ a lot taller than him, and that made the logistics a little difficult - even without the added problem of his own imbalance. All of his senses felt like they were swimming in muck; the ringing whine in his ears alone reduced Leo's lightning-round of commands to a slurry of distant audio he could barely pick words from. He thought he heard a 'where' and a questioning tone in there somewhere and made an educated guess.

"Stairwell," he coughed, unsure if his voice was too quiet - or too loud.

Some deeprooted instinct told him to duck.

He heard the _thwap_ of his sodden, flipping mask tails against the baseball bat that swung directly through the echo of where his head had been.

Donatello struck back hard with one heel and was rewarded instantly with a distorted gasp of pain, the resistance of a human belly giving way beneath his foot. But in his recovery from the counterattack there was nothing he could do to avoid jostling April; he turned as quickly as he dared, grimacing with every tremor the motion sent through her vulnerable frame.

Winded from the blow and buckled slightly over her stomach, the Purple Dragon who had thrown the grenade continued to block his way to the fire escape. Her mouth moved incomprehensibly, words lost beneath the whining of his ears framed by a mocking sneer that told him he wasn't missing anything of value. Whether frustrated by the absence of his response or just plain impatient, she came at him again with the baseball bat.

He could hardly drop April to put up his dukes, and the thug was not interested in giving him enough time to put her down gently. Donatello did his best to duck and weave the incoming melee swings, but every swaying motion shifted and shook her in his grasp, her head bouncing against his plastron. Her features tightened briefly during one particular jolt, teeth flashing in a pained groan.

He was meant to be protecting her and all he was doing was hurting her.

Hurting her _more _anyway.

The evasive movement churned his stomach, too, dizzying and nauseating. Between April and the weight of his duffel bag, he was unwieldy and the thug was relentless, pressing further into his personal space, getting closer and closer to landing a hit. With April dangerously exposed in his arms, Donatello whirled and took one a rattling blow to the shell. It did its job and soaked up the damage, but the force of the impact coursed through his limbs and head in a painful pulse that sent him staggering two steps forward - and two more steps away from the exit.

One knee sank heavily to the floor. Through the haze of pain and addled senses he heard the thump of new footsteps on the stairs. He'd have to retreat, try and lose the Dragon, maybe break a window somewhere. How could he get April out? Maybe he could climb from a window to the fire escape with her, or -

The thug cried out behind him. He turned, and in the periphery of his vision saw her fold against the floor.

"Donnie!"

Michelangelo's shape amassed into being in the mist of the sprinkler. He stowed his weapons and started toward his brother - but flinched when Donatello rose and turned to face him with April still comatose in his arms. Mikey's hands rose along with an anxious whine, fingers curling and uncurling from his palms, his face a picture of worried misery, but he hesitated just short of touching their injured friend. Instead, his eyes darting briefly between April and his brother, he let his palms come to rest on Donatello's shoulders.

"Are you okay?!"

Donatello's hearing seemed to be settling; the words had more definition. He gestured with a nod of his aching head over the turtle's shoulder.

"Fire escape," he said wearily. "We gotta get her out of here."

"I got your shell, Don. Follow me!"

* * *

"I can't believe you guys let this happen!"

On a poorly-lit street corner a few minutes from the hospital, Donatello finally relinquished his undying hold on April. She had stirred groggily and groaned a few times since the flight from the DigiVault building, but it just wouldn't stick. Casey's arms did nothing special to revive her.

Michelangelo hadn't exactly been expecting applause - after making the terse phone call, Raphael had paced the Battle Shell so furiously his heels could have left dents in the floor, slowly crushing his shell-cell in one vice-like hand. Doubtless, part of that was the guilt and frustration he hadn't been able to take out fully on Hun - walking away from _that_ fight had nearly killed him - but Michelangelo also suspected it meant the call hadn't gone down well. Still, he hadn't been prepared for the anger in Casey's jaw as he stared down at April's immobile face.

"You're meant to protect her when you drag her into your crazy ninja schemes! Or at least invite me, so _I_ can!"

Then Michelangelo saw the shine in his eyes, nothing to do with the damp haze of rain that soaked them, and realised the anger was just the cover on the same feeling that had sunk all of their stomachs collectively to the floor. There was a reason Casey and Raphael had become fast friends, after all.

"Please, just go, Casey." Leonardo's voice was flat and tired. "Chew us out later."

The man took a deep breath through his nose and tore his eyes away from April long enough to give them all a quick once-over. Between the explosion in the lobby and the subsequent fighting, only Leonardo had escaped physically unscathed, but Casey's cobalt eyes lingered the longest on Donatello.

"You guys don't look so hot either," he said as he turned away from them, keeping a surprisingly gentle and steady grip on his precious cargo. "Get yourselves straight home, yeah?"

"Just _get goin'_, Case!" Raphael snarled, and actually chased the man a few steps in the direction of the hospital entrance. He stopped just short of stepping out into the brazen street lights, tension straining and vivid in every limb - and, just as suddenly, it all seeped out of him, his shoulders drooping. "We don't matter," he murmured.

Michelangelo looked up at his brothers, but nobody was interested in contradicting Raphael. Donatello stared vacantly after Casey's retreating figure, lost and oblivious; Leonardo had his knuckles driven into his chin, glaring at one of the Battle Shell's wheels, no doubt examining in detail how he was personally responsible for this mess.

His jaw tightened. "That's not true," he said firmly. "We do matter. Donnie, you're hurt too."

That roused them. Raph and Leo spun to look at Donatello as if for the first time since they'd left the building; Donnie blinked and glanced toward him, but his gaze seemed to hover somewhere in the middle distance, confused and unfocused.

"I'm . . . what?"

"Yeah, he's right, brainiac." Raph's whole demeanour softened, and he walked up to Donnie to lay a hand on his shoulder, turning him slightly to get a better look at his shell. "Geez. Are you a turtle or a hedgehog?"

"C'mon, we'd better look him over on the way." Leonardo ushered them urgently into the Battle Shell. "Casey was right - time to go home."

Inside, the custom PDA gleamed on one of the seats; Michelangelo had rescued it from April's hip pack as he'd hastily removed any constricting items from her en route. It had one small crack in the corner of the screen, but otherwise looked fine.

They all stared at it as they entered. Moods dragged even lower by what it could have cost.

Leonardo drove, and Raphael settled their injured brother on a seat and started to tend to his wounds. Michelangelo stood by with the ever-present first aid kit, unable to quell the knotty weight in his belly. The silence in the Battle Shell was so thick, even he was afraid to talk in case he choked on it. But there was one question that bubbled up out of him before he could stop it.

"She'll be okay, right?" he whispered.

* * *

She was okay.

Well. A concussion, a fractured humerus and several bruised ribs probably only counted as 'okay' if you were a mutant, and April sadly didn't qualify. Her _everything_ hurt, and it hurt a whole heaping _lot_. Her ears had yet to stop ringing, and the side of her face that had taken the concussing blow bloomed dark around the cheekbone and eyesocket in a decidedly floral pattern ("Geez, even your bruises are pretty," Casey had commented, and then immediately turned scarlet and excused himself from the hospital room in a cloud of incomprehensible babbling).

The physician had asked her if she remembered what had happened. She assumed, because she had been carried unconscious and hurt into the building by a man who looked like . . . well, _Casey Jones_, that it was a slight variant on the question 'Who hurt you?' and perhaps 'Do we need to call the cops?'. But, her face carefully deadpan and not even skipping a beat, she had answered: "Hit by a car."

Given how well that described the sudden explosion of mutant ninja turtles into her life, it didn't even feel like a lie.

"I was . . jogging. The car came out of nowhere. Didn't catch the plate."

The man had frowned at the pile of dark and now slightly bloodied clothing sitting beside her bed. "Jogging? That time of night? Didn't anyone tell you about the importance of high visibility?"

Her resultant spasms of agony required immediate medical attention, and were so well disguised by pained outcry that, luckily, she didn't have to explain to anyone why she was laughing so hard.

The hospital had monitored her for a while, but after that first dangerous couple of days, April had been alert, coherent, and so sufficiently loaded up with painkillers that Casey was able to bring her home. When she stepped into her apartment it was so clean that every surface sparkled - zero evidence of that turtle sleepover a week ago from which she had been recovering by inches of extra cleaning a day. Every dish and utensil was immaculate and stacked in its rightful place, her cupboards and refrigerator were stocked with goodies, and sitting on the dining table was a huge vase of gorgeous pink peonies that almost matched the colour of her hair. One oversized soft plush turtle (the handmade tag on which said, in what looked suspiciously like Mikey's handwriting, "Fluffael"), several boxes of chocolates and a 'Get Well Soon!' card were propped up next to it.

No sign of the perpetrators themselves, though. That was the first indication that something was wrong.

"I gotta admit, I expected the guys to be here when I got home," she remarked, picking up the card in her unslung hand.

"Ehh, you know." Casey waved it off, one hand sweeping the hair sheepishly from the back of his neck. "That scuffle at the office caused a pretty big scene and upset a _lotta_ Dragons. They said they'd better lay low for a little while."

Not low enough to sneak over here, clean her apartment and bring her flowers while she was gone, though?

She opened the card. Each of the boys - and even Master Splinter - had scribbled a note of some kind. Raph's was the shortest, an awkward "_Feel better, April"_ that she knew had probably taken him five times as much time and effort as Mikey's three-quarter-pager, which opened apologetically but quickly waxed enthusiastic about battle scars and war stories and incorporated a little doodle of her in a pretty fetching superhero costume. Master Splinter had given her no less than five herbal tea recommendations good for healing the body and easing pain - all of which she suspected would have mysteriously appeared in her cupboards - and Leo's concise, elegant well wishes ended with him calling her _oneesama_.

She smiled, and fought back the sudden lump in her throat.

Donnie's was, unexpectedly, not much longer than Raph's. In her suddenly quivering gut she felt it cut right to the heart of the matter.

"_April. So sorry you got hurt. Thanks for everything you've done for us."_

It had a weight of finality to it that she didn't like.


	4. Disaster Recovery

They didn't come by the next day. The turtles' presence had apparently formed a relationship of inverse proportions to that of Casey Jones, who pressed so hard to sleep on her couch _just in case she needed anything_ that she caved in only because one arm was simply not enough to shoo this one-man-wrecking-crew out of the door.

Out of spite, she dragged herself out of bed early, broken bones, bruised ribs and bashed head screaming, and woke him up to a fried breakfast that she cooked all by herself, one-handed and concussed and everything.

Then she spent the rest of the afternoon rolling in agony on the sofa, enduring his _I-told-you-so_ looks because she had patently overdone it.

If she had wanted to get rid of the man, she'd achieved the opposite effect. Privately, she wasn't sure it was such a bad thing he'd stuck around. Her 'war wounds' packed a punch, and topping up the painkillers was making her too drowsy to do much for herself.

Plus he looked ridiculously adorable in her pink kitchen apron. The one with the kitten print.

While he prepped a pragmatic but undoubtedly protein-filled dinner she fished out her shell-cell and dialled Donnie's number.

It rang out.

* * *

They didn't come by the next day. Rain battered her bedroom window, obscuring a dismal grey sky. April kept miserably to her room, buried under her covers, hurting and frustrated and staring in consternation at the sleepy-eyed cartoony face of Fluffael. Casey was getting better at reading her moods; aside from dropping in the occasional refreshments, he spent most of the day manning the shop floor for her.

She took a moment during one visit and shook off her unhappy funk long enough to thank him, sincerely and with a warm, appreciative smile. He left the room glowing like he was radioactive, but he sucked all the positivity away with him, and before long April was once again toying with the shell-cell.

Donnie still wouldn't pick up. She'd tried him several times. It was very Not Normal. He often answered with such enthusiasm that he seemed to pick up before before she'd even dialled his number. And he'd been caught in the blast with her - Casey had filled her in. Maybe he was hurt and they were hiding it from her? She couldn't remember much after that _boom_ until she woke up on a hospital bed.

But he'd left her the note on the card. Did that forego any serious injury? Her guts were tangled with anxiety now, even at the possibilities. She switched strategies; time to try another brother. Who had the best odds?

Michelangelo's cell rang for five long seconds before the click of a pick-up sounded, and she sighed in relief.

"_Uh, hi, April!"_

"Mikey!"

"_Oh man. It's so great to hear from you. Are you uh . . . are you doing okay?"_

"Better now that one of you is _answering_ his _phone_. Tell Don I can't get through to him - at all!"

"_Oh, um. Sure. I can do that. _Whaaaaat_?"_ That last drawled query was quieter, a physical aside clearly directed at someone other than her.

"What is it?"

"_Just Raph, glaring at me."_

"Any particular reason, or . . . ?"

"_Oh, I dunno. It might just be his normal face. You know it's kinda hard to tell the difference. Listen, April, I . . . I gotta go, okay?"_

"Right now?!" April began to dig herself out of the covers. "But we've barely - I mean, are you guys _okay_?! It got hairy in there and - and I haven't even thanked you for my gifts!"

"_We're fine, and you totally just did! We'll talk real soon, okay?"_

Michelangelo went quiet, but he didn't immediately hang up the line.

" . . . Mike?"

He sighed. "_Real soon. Later."_

The connection dropped. April resisted the urge to hurl the phone across the room.

* * *

They didn't come by the next day. Or the day after that.

In fact, three weeks into her recovery and she still hadn't seen scale nor scute of a mutant ninja turtle.

It wouldn't have bothered her if they weren't so obviously avoiding her calls. She'd only caught Mikey a few times out of dozens of attempts, Leo once. Conversations she did manage to grab were extremely brief. Polite but sparing. She got the most out of Mikey, but he gave up every word with a strange hangdog reluctance and was always the one to end the conversation - an unusual state of affairs.

Raph never answered. That wasn't massively out of character - he preferred to talk face to face - but Donnie . . . she couldn't remember the last time she'd gone even two days without a single phone call with him. Conversation always bubbled easily between them, brewed by a heady mix of shared interests and intellect and emotional intelligence that had quickly made them as thick as thieves. There was always so much to talk about - his latest projects and where she could lend a hand; the details of any occasional freelance code and IT security jobs she picked up to supplement her income; scientific and technical developments and relevant books the other had read; the feasibility of tech in various (usually bad) sci-fi movies; and sometimes, the finer details on just how annoying his brothers could be.

Losing that contact hurt, no two ways about it. O'Neils were an independent lot on the whole - flew the nest early, no real home base. Her sister lived far away and visits were infrequent, and April had been fine with that. Really! Living alone had never bothered her, not once.

Not until the turtles had crashed into her life and taught her, by vivid contrast, the silence of an empty apartment.

Casey offered no insight. He visited less and less, summoned back to his own life and work as her health improved. She hated to admit it, but with the turtles AWOL and her self-appointed nanny leaving her to her own devices, something about her home was . . . lacking. April was not enjoying her newfound loneliness.

Tonight, at least, she had company. Casey thought there were only three food groups - red meat, white meat, and potatoes - but his cooking wasn't actually that bad if you could stand an endless onslaught of stodgy, hearty food. The tuneless humming he adopted when working in the kitchen was just part of the package deal, and so familiar to April by now that it faded into the background as she settled down for another broody evening sofa session.

She switched on the TV, and cut right into a very interesting news report.

"_\- at the scene, where last night, ferocious rival gang warfare erupted at the docks. Witnesses reported loud gunfire and brawling in and around this warehouse, but perpetrators fled the scene when law enforcement arrived and are still being pursued. The police were able to recover almost thirty crates of illegal firearms from inside the warehouse, likely destined for black market trade. Tattoos found on some of those arrested in the vicinity potentially link them to the Purple Drag-"_

She turned it off, and glared furiously into her own face reflected in the silent black screen.

"Ohhhh, you _little_ . . ."

She'd barely breathed the threat, but the fire in it must have carried all the way to the kitchen. Casey turned away from dinner preparations, one eyebrow apprehensively raised.

"Uh, what's up, Ape?"

She flicked the TV back on and cranked up the volume. "Did you _know_ about this?"

"Uh . . ." Helicopter-mounted cameras panned across the ravaged warehouse as the news presenter droned on. Casey's eyes wouldn't stick to the scene, fidgeting like evasive children to climb the furniture of her apartment instead. He scratched sheepishly at his arm.

April stared at him. He was wearing long sleeves today.

Casey Jones _never_ wore long sleeves. He was hiding something.

Probably a hell of a lot of black and blue.

"Were you _there_?" Rage pitched her voice to the very threshold of human hearing.

"I - I - I mean, maybe I -"

"Casey Jones. _Fetch my coat_."

* * *

There was no opportunity for Casey to call ahead and give the guys the storm warning (and if he had tried, and they had _answered him_, she would have been tearing down walls). Her furious march must have tripped every sensor and camera on the approach, nonetheless; all four of them were skulking inside the entrance when the Lair's elevator door bowed open before the force of nature that was April O'Neil. She thundered inside, radiating wrath despite the coat hanging awkwardly off one shoulder and the slight limp and the ungainly sling.

"Laying low! Laying _low_?! I don't know how long you guys expected me to _buy _that!"

They were all whole and looked healthy enough, besides a few bruises presumably from last night. A thread of worry that had been tying her insides up for the past few weeks was finally allowed to snap - but with that weight gone, all her energy flowed back into her growing well of hot ire.

The turtles looked like they'd been caught in the headlights; Mikey hovered behind Leo, who actually had his arm angled out slightly as if to protect him from harm. Donnie lurked awkwardly on the end. Raph tried to steal and redirect her glare at Casey, who immediately threw up his hands in self-defence.

"Don't look at me like that! I didn't say nothin', Raph."

"He didn't have to! Don't think I don't know what's going on here!" April's good hand formed a fist that she clenched firmly against one thigh. She glared at each turtle in turn, letting her penetrating green eyes burrow the hardest and longest into Donatello. "You're cutting me out of the loop. You're . . . _avoiding_ me!"

So turtles could be sheepish, too. Four pairs of eyes behind masks had drifted simultaneously to the floor. And their guilt _hurt_, because it validated what she already suspected. In her heart of hearts, she had always known what was wrong with Donnie and his brothers, but she hadn't wanted to believe it. April fought the hurt down but couldn't keep it from manifesting in the tight set of her mouth, the narrowing of her eyes.

"You really didn't want to see me? I practically got myself _blown up _for you guys and -"

"That's exactly why!" The words burst out of Raphael in a coarse shout, gritty and rough with distress. "You could've been killed, April! We should never have taken you along. To _any _of 'em. We've dragged you into too many of our messes too many times and - and it ain't fair!" His nostrils flared. "It ain't right."

If she could have obstinately folded her arms, she would. "Oh, but it's okay if _Casey's _skull gets bashed in?"

"Hey, don't bring me into -" Casey paused. "Y'know, lady's got a point."

"Can it, Jones!" Raph yelled him down. "You ain't helpin'!"

"Even if you didn't want me involved in missions anymore, why would that mean you couldn't even _talk_ to me?" Again, her gaze locked onto Donnie with all the finesse of a missile system, but the purple-clad turtle forlornly offered nothing. It was Leo who steeled himself and finally looked her in the eye, swallowing heavily before the words came out.

"April, the more time you spend with us, the more danger you're always in. Trouble follows us even when we're not looking for it. Limiting contact just seemed . . . safer. Easier."

"For _who_?" she demanded, and saw the guilt ripple through them like an involuntary Mexican wave. April inhaled loudly, exhaled in a dark huff. Once more, her eyes raked the turtle lineup one by one. "You all agreed to this?"

"I didn't wanna!" Mikey moaned.

"None of us _wanted _to," Leo asserted quickly, his hands raised in pleading appeal. "But we . . . we care about you a lot, April. And seeing you get hurt . . . Look, you've already done so much for us. We decided - we _all_ decided - that we couldn't let you risk your life for us anymore."

He squared his shoulders, confident in his noble justification - until the sight of April's solar face made the strength in his expression crumble.

"_Let_ me, Leonardo? _LET_ me?" Behind her, she could feel the whips of air as Casey flailed both hands in the universal language of _abort, abort_, probably shaking his head in a feverish paroxysm. "I make my own choices, boys!"

"B-but . . . all the things you've lost because of us!" Leo curled his hands hopelessly into his plastron. "You'll _never_ live a normal life as long as you know us. It's not so long ago that the Shredder burned your entire home to the ground just because we were in it!"

Of course, he'd choose that example. Funny how it meant something so different to her. When she closed her eyes, she could still smell the smoke . . . and feel the stumbling weight of him against her side, his limp arm threatening to slip from her shoulders. The rasp of the breaths he stole through blockades of internal injury.

Some of her steam escaped on a curt sigh, and April relaxed her coiled fist. "Do you know what else I've nearly lost, way too many times to count?"

Four green heads exchanged wary glances; they knew a trap when they saw one.

"_You guys_!" she answered for them, and didn't have to dramatise the sudden tightness in her throat or glistening of her eyes. "You think I don't understand how you're feeling right now? What you're feeling right now is my _life_! How many times have I had to watch you guys come home with war wounds? How many stories about awful close calls have you told me - and how many _haven't_ you told me? What about the time when the TCRI building imploded with you in it! Ugh!"

Even the memories of the anxiety were a plague in her chest, an echoed tumult in her stomach. April clutched her head with a clawed hand. "At this point I practically _have _to dye my hair because it's turning white! I worry about you guys _all_. _The_. _Time_! So if there is ever any way that I can help you, I will, without hesitation. You don't get to 'let' me. You're my family, and that's the end of the matter."

Mikey had his hands clutched to his mouth and his enraptured eyes were shining out from his mask.

Her departing rage left a cold, fatigued void behind that invited in all the remnant pain of her healing injuries. April wilted a little in the middle, pressing a hand weakly to her own hip. "Besides, you're not allowed to . . . to _crash_ into my life and leave a giant turtle-shaped hole in it, then _bail_ on me and leave me with nothing to fill it! And no, Fluffael does _not_ count."

Raph's face scrunched up. "Mikey, I'm gonna kill you."

With one last burst of offended energy she levelled a disappointed teacher's glare at them. "Am I making myself clear?"

"Yes, ma'am," Mikey murmured as the others fidgeted, the corners of his mouth upturned.

"Welcome back, Miss O'Neil."

All heads turned toward Splinter's sanctum. The screen doors were open and the old rat stood between them, both paws curled over his cane. A contented hum rumbled from his small chest, mirrored in the all-knowing smile - but both ceased when he bowed respectfully toward April.

"Please accept my apologies for my silence, but . . ." Splinter cast a sly sideways glance at his sons. "An important lesson needed to be learned here."

The implied criticism might as well have been a physical blow. Leo flinched the hardest; he plunged into a formal bow before her, head dipping so low that she couldn't see his face. His brothers joined him, just fractional seconds behind . . . but was Don's gesture a little slower than the others? A little more forced? April had no time to contemplate it because Michelangelo sprang upright first. His face was split with a huge grin of relief.

"We missed you, April!" he squealed, and barrelled towards with arms flung wide - only to stumble to a halt a mere three feet away. "Wait, where can I hug? Are you even huggable yet?"

"I am _very gently huggable only_." April braced herself for a Michelangelo bonecrusher as he reopened his arms, but when he enveloped her he was unusually delicate and beaming with the energy of a big, green, scaly puppy. She lifted her free arm and patted down warmly on his shell as her eyes drifted up to her other onlookers. "What, you guys don't want in on this?"

Leo squirmed and didn't seem to know where to put his hands, but he shuffled closer with that special brand of bravery he reserved for painful social situations. Given that April was down one arm, Mikey took the initiative and yoinked his brother firmly into the circle. A slight delay, and April felt Leo's hand settle tentatively on her back.

"I'm sorry, April. I . . . thought we were doing the right thing by you."

"I know you did, Leo," she sighed, exasperated but fond. "But you can talk to me! Just ask next time?"

"Ain't nothin' to ask." Raphael's sullen grumble sounded right in her ear. He hovered on the periphery of the group hug, strained and tense as though physically resisting the pull of it. "It _was_ the right thing. You're crazy, April! Why would you wanna keep putting your life on the line for . . . for . . ."

He fumbled for the words, but April could see them in his wistful eyes. For _this_. For _us_. For _me_.

She swept her hand against his shell and dragged him in close enough to plant the tiniest of kisses on the top of his head.

Raphael made an indecipherable noise and endured two whole seconds of love and affection - April counted them - before he tore himself away, fists clenched at his sides. He broke into a run toward the elevator door.

"I'm goin' out," he croaked.

"Hey, wait up, Raph!" Casey threw April a casual salute as he jogged after him. Either he'd keep Raph out of trouble or keep him company in the middle of it, which was sometimes the best you could make of a Raphael-plus-Casey-Jones situation.

"If Raph doesn't want his kiss, can I have his share?" Mikey asked sweetly. And April laughed, and was in the middle of obliging when she realised her group hug was still short one member.

But the ramp was empty. Donatello was already gone.

* * *

Don's theme tune gave him away; the relentless _tapatap_ of a keyboard rattled out from the corner of the Lair that constituted his workshop. April followed the clicks until she found him hunched over his desk, his shell as solid as a brick wall between them.

"Okay, mister," she said. "Time for you and I to have a talk."

The tapping stopped. Don let out a sigh that seemed to escape from his entire body, shrinking him in his seat. "April . . ." The chair swivelled slowly, exposing the front of him by inches. His hands were clasped nervously in his lap and his eyes were anxious, peering out from beneath a wrinkled brow. He only managed to look her in the face for a second - all too quickly his gaze dropped to her sling, then away altogether as if magnetically repelled.

April marched toward his chair. "Don, I'm not leaving until you tell me what's going on with you."

"It was my fault."

The blunt answer brought her up short.

"You got hurt because of _me_." The turtle stared down at his hands. "I was meant to protect you and I failed. I . . . _failed_."

"Donnie . . ." April moved forward, but he began to revolve away toward his desk. This close, she could reach out and touch the pits and rents in his carapace that hadn't been there the last time she'd seen him, and her heart throbbed in her chest. "You dummy. You saved my life! Casey told me how much shrapnel they had to pull out of your shell. If that had hit me, too, I probably wouldn't be here. Or I'd have a lot more holes in me." Her hand moved to his shoulder, firm grip preventing him from turning any further away from her. "Listen, I meant what I said. I'm with you, okay? I'm part of this. I choose to be. Besides, this was hardly the first near-death situation I've ever been in! Don't you remember how we met?"

"I know, but I've still never seen you _hurt _before." Donnie's mask was looped about his neck; his unobscured eyes were clear, warm and brown, glowing with affection, and just a smidgen bashful as he met her gaze. "Sometimes you're so amazing, I forget that . . . you're only . . ."

"Human?" she said with a quirk of an eyebrow, already loading a staunch defence of her unmutated species onto her tongue. But Donnie shook his head and forestalled her.

"Mortal," he said softly.

A little flutter of air escaped her fond smile. "Don . . . I may be both of those things, but I'm not _fragile_. No O'Neil requires a 'Handle With Care' sticker, okay?" She wrapped her good arm around his shoulders and pressed in as hard as she dared, her cheek squishing against the top of his head. "Please don't shut me out."

Donatello drew in a ragged breath, and when he let it out again he sank fully into her embrace, his arms enveloping her back.

"I'm sorry. I didn't want to, either," he whispered. Then he pulled back a little, a faint but very Donatello smile tugging at his mouth. "It's not like I have any other avenues for intelligent conversation down here."

"You think _you_ had it bad? Try having Casey as a nursemaid!"

He snorted, a little of his usual sardonic humour seeping back into him as they separated. "Okay. You win."

"I usually do," April grinned, and eagerly pulled up the spare, beat-up chair that all but had her name written on it. "Now, come on. Are you gonna show me the Purple Dragon dirt we managed to dig up from that server, or what?"


End file.
